Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

8 O viedo | C ampoamor T heatre | figure of our very own Pedro Duque; because astronaut Polyakov once again reminds us both of the enormous advantages of peaceful cooperation and of the futility of confrontation between peoples; and because —coming as they do from two different continents— Mukai and Glenn add a universal perspective to the conquest of outer space, the Japanese astronaut by her contribution to the progress of space medicine, and Glenn by consolidating with his experience that pioneering nature that his country has long demonstrated in its ventures into space. All of them, after great sacrifice and with great risk to their lives, have travelled far away from our planet, only to be closer to it, only to watch over and safeguard its progress, only to ennoble science. They have been able to see our beautiful, blue planet almost in miniature from their spacecraft; at the same time, they have seen it spectacularly united under its biosphere. No doubt each of them have pondered on what brings mankind together and what forces humanity apart, on the incomprehensible, sterile hatreds among men, on the invisible borderlines drawn up to separate nations, on the confrontation between different peoples of a planet that is so prodigious, so teeming with life and so beautiful. The effort and tenacity of each of them provides us with a number of examples which, as a single unit, we point to here today with admiration: their outstanding professionalism, their fraternal joint work, the peaceful nature of their project, their wish to disseminate and share their experience and, in short, the high ideals of their work for the benefit of science and thus of the human race as a whole. One of the principles that our Foundation follows —that of contributing to society’s moral awareness-raising– is fulfilled in exemplary fashion this year by the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, bestowed on Caritas Spain. No work is as indispensable and as noble as work for the most needy: the elderly, the homeless, immigrants, those dependent on drugs, AIDS victims, the handicapped, the prison population, the socially ostracised in general, groups at difficult moments in their youth, in their infancy, in their family, and women. Faced with such special, outstanding work, we wish to stress here that charity and justice are not opposing concepts that cancel each other out, but quite the opposite. As was pointed out by the president of Caritas Spain when granted the Award, the meaning of the word “charity” is in no way synonymous of “a hand-out” or of “benefits”; it is rather a synonym of the word “love”. For this reason, it could be said that Caritas is like “a love which never fails you”, because of the fine example that its seventy-five thousand volunteers set, because of the work carried out in its network of five thousand Caritas parish groups, three thousand five hundred and seventy- five centres and seven thousand reception points, all established thanks to the hearts of tens of thousands of contributors who, moved by generosity and with great tenacity, dream of creating a better world, a fairer, more fraternal world, and of getting mankind, in the words left to us by Albert Camus, “to feel once more the love for fellow man without which the world would be an immense solitude.” Once more, youth and effort that borders on the limits come together in exemplary fashion in the award for the best sports persons in the world. This is why the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports has been bestowed on the German tennis player, Steffi Graf. It has been awarded to her for her career in sport, but also for her human qualities, for an aspiring to the common good that goes beyond her strictly professional work and which has recently taken on a tangible form in the opening of a foundation to help children and young victims of violence and exploitation, with special attention paid to those suffering the consequences of war. It is difficult to synthesise the many merits of Steffi Graf ’s career in sport. Outstanding are her twenty-two Grand Slam tournament victories, her 377 weeks as leader of the professional tennis players ranking and being the youngest Roland Garros winner. Yet once more when faced with any outstanding professional work, when faced with any youthful, brilliant triumph, we would point out that the person achieving such success would be nothing if he or she did not possess other human values. Thus the criteria of the great athletes “Achieving a fairer, more caring world must continue to be a priority of human activity.” 22 nd O ctober 1999